Arena Profile: Shadi Hamid

Shadi Hamid is director of research at the Brookings Doha Center and a fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Hamid focuses on Islamist political parties and democratic reform in the Middle East. Prior to joining Brookings, he was Director of Research at the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) and a Hewlett Fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Shadi Hamid's Recent Discussions

Mubarak won't run again -- what's the effect?

We may very well be entering an Arab democratic moment. This is not about individual countries and their particular economic and political conditions, although those certainly matter. Something bigger is going on here. Arabs are discovering a power they weren’t aware they had. Arab regimes gave the impression of being stable, strong, and secure, backed by overwhelming coercive capacity. Facing such odds, fighting for democratic change seemed a losing battle.

Tunisia, then, was decisive. It showed that the long vaunted stability of authoritarian governments was illusory. They, too, could fall. All you needed was a good dose of people power. There is, after all, strength – and safety – in numbers.

Even if the attempted revolutions fail, Arab regimes can never go back to what they once were. They will live in fear of the next revolt. The opposition will wait in anticipation of the next revolt. The stability of any regime is no longer guaranteed. What is interesting this same feeling is replicated in widely divergent contexts. Inspired by Tunisia – and, now, Egypt – Yemeni activists are planning a “day of rage” for Feb. 3. Syrians will be having theirs on Feb. 5. Northern Sudan, too, has been roiled by protests. Meanwhile, the Jordanian opposition, after several years of treading water, has used a string of successful protests to push for unprecedented changes in the nature of Hashemite monarchy.

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